Hotel Chisca project director joins real estate firm

Chase Carlisle has left Memphis-based Carlisle Corp. to become a vice president in commercial real estate firm Avison Young's Memphis office.
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April 7, 2017 - Chase Carlisle, director of real estate for the Carlisle Corp., is leaving the family business to join the Memphis office of a Canadian real estate brokerage company.(Photo: Yalonda M. James/The Commercial Appeal)Buy Photo

With one transformative project in Downtown Memphis done and a bigger one still in the works, Chase Carlisle has left Carlisle Corp. to join commercial real estate firm Avison Young.

Carlisle has been named vice president of brokerage services for Avison Young’s nine-person Memphis office.

Carlisle’s late father Gene Carlisle built a 3,500-employee family business that’s a major owner of Wendy’s restaurants and Lyfe Kitchens and developer of two key projects in Downtown Memphis.

As director of real estate and development for the company, Chase Carlisle served as project director on the historic Hotel Chisca’s $32 million conversion from dilapidated eyesore into apartments and restaurants.

He leaves it to his older brother, president Chance Carlisle, to guide Carlisle Corp.’s proposed $200 million high-rise One Beale. The mixed-use development has been on the drawing board for more than a decade but has inched closer to reality in recent years.

Chase Carlisle, 31, said it was difficult to leave, but the new job is an opportunity to pursue his passion for real estate development.

He’s already working on projects that could come to fruition in Midtown and Downtown, he said. “That’s all I’ll say.”

After Gene Carlisle’s death in 2015 at age 72, the company reorganized, with Chase Carlisle selling his interest and becoming controlling owner of Chisca on Main.

“It was the privilege of my life to work alongside my father, and I will treasure that for the rest of my life,” he said.

In seven years at Carlisle Corp., he was involved in more than $215 million in real estate transactions through acquisition, development and disposition.

After the reorganization, and because the business wasn’t looking at development projects beyond One Beale, “I had to sit down and say the thing that I love to do is develop and be a part of real estate and the art of the deal,” Carlisle said. “There’s nothing more fun.”

Shane Soefker and Jacob Biddle opened the Memphis office of global, Canada-based firm Avison Young in December 2015 after leaving Cushman & Wakefield Commercial Advisors.

Carlisle met them when Cushman & Wakefield represented Catherine & Mary’s restaurant on a lease at the Chisca.

Carlisle’s focus at Avison Young is consulting, investment sales, development services and growing its presence in Memphis and the region.

Soefker, principal of the Memphis office, said, “We are pleased that our company culture attracted Chase to our firm, and know that he will greatly benefit our current and prospective clients.”

Carlisle said he's proud of the Chisca and optimistic his former company will carry out One Beale, with Avison Young perhaps playing a role.

"The thing that's most gratifying to me is adding to this growing wave of city pride we've had over the last decade. I'm glad we were able to be part of saving this wonderful property (the Chisca). Hopefully, it's going to be around for another 100 years."